Happy birthday to me!

I recently turned 4 years old… in postdoc years. I honestly don’t know how to feel about this. I definitely feel older? Yet, I am still surprisingly optimistic about science and academia. Some days I think I “took the blue pill” long ago (Matrix reference) — the blue pill by the way is the one that keeps you asleep and unaware, providing organic power to the machine overlords for all your living days… so, perhaps a better metaphor than I initially intended… *wink*

Anywhooooo… as I reach the completion of my postdoc (2 more years and counting) and contemplate a transition to assistant professorship, I find myself wanting to provide some hope, knowledge, advice, or simply a listening space to other grad students and postdocs. Like so many things in life, this is an experiment. I hope this is a resource that others find useful to affirm that science is cool and research is fun, but yes, the process that is the academic path is often both physically and mentally exhausting and we really need to support each other through it.

P.S. I sincerely hope this is not all be one big distraction to avoid working on my paper. Sigh… productive procrastination...